Finborough Theatre Archives - Page 7 of 25

Scrounger

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed – 10th January 2020

★★★★

“a great example of a play that does not appeal to our human desire for resolution, but instead rightly demonstrates that the fight for true equality and justice is far from over”

Directed by Lily McLeish, Scrounger is an autobiographical play that recounts a traumatic incident experienced by Athena Stevens at London City Airport in 2015. Born with athetoid cerebral palsy, Stevens was removed from a British Airways flight when staff could not get her £30,000 electric wheelchair into the hold. When Stevens’ chair was returned to her, it was severely damaged, leaving her without autonomous mobility and trapped in her flat for months before she received settlement.

Through Twitter hashtags, an appeal to EU law, and a petition organised by campaign group 38 Degrees, Stevens boldly embarks on trying to a change a system that is inherently stacked against her.

Stevens however does not only point blame at our Conservative government, but also the show’s presumed audience, specifically, “the left leaning, Guardian reading, Daily Mail hating, Oxfam giving, colour blind seeing, red voting, paper straw using, conflict avoiding, zen loving, feminist supporting, always for the few…liberal minded you.” The villains of this story are not just the incompetent staff she had encountered, but Stevens’ yoga-loving boyfriend and obtusely middle-class friend Emma as well, all of whom are played excellently by Leigh Quinn.

A central theme of the play is conflict and the inherent privilege of being able to avoid it. Stevens notes that amongst her friends she is known as always being ‘up for a fight’ but explains that her very existence as a disabled individual necessitates this. The faith that Stevens’ boyfriend has in the legal system to deliver justice highlights this well and succeeds in making the audience consider how they too may just be another cog in the flawed machine.

The production is split into some-twenty chapters titled with an exciting summation of the contents of the coming scenes though what follows sometimes only lasts a couple of minutes. Simultaneously, when the chapters reach double figures, there is little plot to show for it. There would certainly be great benefit to the performance’s pace in amalgamating a few chapters.

There is also little to no sense of how much real time has passed until Quinn suddenly announces halfway through the show that it has been 35 days since the incident. Based on the events that have unfolded by this point, the audience would be safe to assume it had been less than a week. Signposting the days more clearly, and perhaps even replacing the chapter titles with the day count, would certainly help to reduce moments where the play feels stagnant.

A wonky white house set (Anna Reid) surrounds the stage with two respective doors and neon-framed windows for entrance, exit and pop-ups. When she’s not playing a plethora of different characters, Quinn sits at a desk to the front right of the stage from which she accesses several props, a soundboard and a microphone. The sound (Julian Starr) and lighting (Anthony Doran) does well to match the mood on stage, though some of the production’s most powerful moments occur when everything is stripped back and Stevens addresses the audience without the glitz and glamour of the theatre.

Scrounger offers an important narrative about oppression and non-linear progression. Crucially, Stevens’ story does not end in rainbows and sunshine with everything tied up in a little bow. There is no great monetary victory; no law created to protect those vulnerable to similar mistreatment; and no real consequences for the companies involved. Scrounger is a great example of a play that does not appeal to our human desire for resolution, but instead rightly demonstrates that the fight for true equality and justice is far from over.

Reviewed by Flora Doble

Photography by Lily McLeish

Scrounger

Finborough Theatre until 1st February

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Jeannie | ★★★★ | November 2018

Beast on the Moon | ★★★★★ | January 2019

Time Is Love | ★★★½ | January 2019

A Lesson From Aloes | ★★★★★ | March 2019

Maggie May | ★★★★ | March 2019

Blueprint Medea | ★★★ | May 2019

After Dark; Or, A Drama Of London Life | ★★★★ | June 2019

Go Bang Your Tambourine | ★★★★ | August 2019

The Niceties | ★★★ | October 2019

Chemistry | ★★★ | November 2019

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★★★

“two very good performances are somewhat undermined by an overly long script”

Jacob Marx Rice’s Chemistry is revived at the Finborough Theatre this month. Originally produced in New York in 2013, director Alex Howarth brings this modern story of star-crossed lovers across the pond to London.

Steph suffers from chronic depression. She’s very glib about the number of times she’s tried to kill herself. Jamie has always been an incredibly high achiever, working himself to the breaking point. When he finally does break, he’s diagnosed with a rare disorder called unipolar mania. Steph and Jamie meet in a psychiatrist’s waiting room. As their casual dating deepens into real love, Steph tries to throw on the brakes – how can they take care of each other when they struggle to take care of themselves?

Howarth’s set is unusual. A large metal rectangle, suspended waist-high in the air, frames the stage, significantly reducing the Finborough’s already small performance space. Presumably the intention is to manifest the confinement of an ill mind, as the two characters never leave this highly restricted area until the final scenes. Beneath the metal frame, tracing the same rectangle, is a mass of intertwined wires and lightbulbs, which suggests the complexity of the brain – its unfathomable tangles of synapses and neurons. Oddly, and perhaps unnecessarily, the performers use microphones for narration, and set them aside for dialogue.

Caoimhe Farren brings admirable genuineness to the depressive Steph. She’s in turn detached, intense, caustic, and vulnerable. James Mear is appropriately high-strung as the manic Jamie. They play their opposed psychologies off of each other well, and do an impressive job negotiating the tight space. However, two very good performances are somewhat undermined by an overly long script. At ninety minutes, Rice’s play is at least half an hour too long. Lengthy monologues, extraneous scenes, and repeated ideas all point to an urgent need for an editor. It’s a slow play, and the overstuffed script makes it feel slower. It’s a shame, because Rice has written some immensely interesting conversations about mental health, and succeeded in portraying depression with authenticity, insight, and unaffected empathy.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was huge the year Chemistry was first staged, and it’s clear the play absorbed whatever was in the air at the time. Rice’s script repeatedly drifts into teenage melodrama, which feels a bit maudlin now. It’s unfortunate that Howarth and lighting designer Rachel Sampley have chosen to push the show further into the saccharine rather than pull it back: warm lights glow in the dark while Sufjan Stephens plays as the fated lovers try to savour their time together.

Chemistry provides a fascinating window into two characters’ unique battles with mental health. Even now in 2019, six years after the play was written, mental illnesses are still so misunderstood. It’s a highly relevant, excellently performed piece that’s in need of cutting and trimming.

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Claire Bilyard

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed – 10th January 2020

★★★★

“a great example of a play that does not appeal to our human desire for resolution, but instead rightly demonstrates that the fight for true equality and justice is far from over”

Through Twitter hashtags, an appeal to EU law, and a petition organised by campaign group 38 Degrees, Stevens boldly embarks on trying to a change a system that is inherently stacked against her.

Reviewed by Flora Doble

Photography by Lily McLeish

Scrounger

Finborough Theatre until 1st February

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed – 1st November 2019

★★★

“two very good performances are somewhat undermined by an overly long script”

Jacob Marx Rice’s Chemistry is revived at the Finborough Theatre this month. Originally produced in New York in 2013, director Alex Howarth brings this modern story of star-crossed lovers across the pond to London.

Chemistry provides a fascinating window into two characters’ unique battles with mental health. Even now in 2019, six years after the play was written, mental illnesses are still so misunderstood. It’s a highly relevant, excellently performed piece that’s in need of cutting and trimming.

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Claire Bilyard

Chemistry

Finborough Theatre until 23rd November

Previously reviewed at this venue: